FILED
United States Court of
Appeals
Tenth Circuit
No. 14-1244
(D.C. No. 1:13-CR-00379-WJM-1)
(D. Colorado)
Defendant - Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before MATHESON, BACHARACH, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges.
This order and judgment does not constitute binding precedent except
under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel.
But, the order and judgment may be cited for its persuasive value under
Fed. R. App. P. 32.1(a) and 10th Cir. R. 32.1(A).
I.
1.
2.
The other issue was the validity of the stop. Appellants App. at 120.
The other two issues involved the validity of the stop and the
applicability of the exclusionary rule. Appellants App. at 120-21.
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Id. at 121. 3
Because the government lacked a warrant, the district court correctly
placed the burden on the government to demonstrate that Officer Tritschler
had acted lawfully. Id. at 92; see United States v. Maestas, 2 F.3d 1485,
1491 (10th Cir. 1993). Attempting to meet this burden, the government
argued that the arrest was lawful under federal immigration statutes
because Officer Tritschler had acted in cooperation with federal
immigration officials and had complied with the statutory procedures.
Appellants App. at 4044; see 8 U.S.C. 1357(g)(10) (2012). But the
government never challenged Mr. Argueta-Mejias argument about the
absence of probable cause.
The district court declined to address the issue of probable cause.
Instead, the court granted the motion to suppress based on Officer
Tritschlers failure to comply with the statutory procedures governing
immigration officials.
In United States v. Martinez, 643 F.3d 1292, 1293 (10th Cir. 2011),
the government appealed a district courts suppression order arising from
law enforcements unlawful entry. On appeal, the government made a new
argument to justify law enforcements entry into the defendants home.
Martinez, 643 F.3d at 1298. We declined to entertain the governments new
argument, stating: We will not consider a suppression argument raised for
the first time on appeal absent a showing of good cause for why it was not
raised before the trial court. Id.
Mr. Argueta-Mejia relies on Martinez, arguing that the government
waived its present argument on probable cause. The government contends
that Martinez simply assumed the existence of a waiver. But the
government acknowledged in oral argument that the so-called assumption
in Martinez was not really academic because it had consequences to
the decision. Oral Arg. at 2:18-2:51. We need not assess the governments
parsing of Martinez or decide whether the government waived its newly
asserted argument on probable cause. Even if we were to apply the plainerror standard (as the government urges) rather than deem the
governments new argument waived (as the defendant urges), the existence
of probable cause would not have been sufficiently obvious to merit
reversal.
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A.
For plain error, the error must be clear and obvious under current
law. United States v. Brown, 316 F.3d 1151, 1158 (10th Cir. 2003)
(quoting United States v. Fabiano, 169 F.3d 1299, 130203 (10th Cir.
1999)). If the district court had erred, the error would not have been clear
or obvious.
B.
The district court concluded that (1) Officer Tritschler had failed to
comply with 8 U.S.C. 1357(g) (2012) and (2) the government had not met
its burden to demonstrate another lawful reason for the arrest. Appellants
App. at 10607. In challenging the first conclusion, the government
contends that Officer Tritschler did not need to comply with 1357(g)
because it applies only when state officers are performing immigration
officer functions. 8 U.S.C. 1357(g) (2012).
We agree. The federal constitution allows a state law enforcement
officer to make an arrest for any crime, including federal immigration
offenses. See United States v. Santana-Garcia, 264 F.3d 1188, 119394
(10th Cir. 2001) (in the absence of contrary state or local laws, state law
enforcement officers can make arrests for violation of federal immigration
laws). As a result, we must decide whether probable cause would have been
obvious for an arrest on federal charges.
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an alien,
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In oral argument, the government argued for the first time that
permission to reenter is not that easy to come by. Oral Arg. at 7:01-7:33.
We reject this argument for two reasons. First, the argument is waived
because it was raised for the first time in oral argument. See United States
v. Burns, 775 F.3d 1221, 1223 n.2 (10th Cir. 2014). Second, the
government has not presented any evidence, either in district court or on
appeal, about the difficulties in obtaining permission to reenter or the
frequency in which permission is given. In the absence of such evidence,
neither our court nor the Supreme Court has ever held that a judge can rely
on the infrequency of permission for reentry into the United States. Thus,
we cannot base plain error on the governments statement in oral argument
that permission to reenter is not that easy to come by.
7
The government relies on a report (an NCIC alert), but has not
cited any cases regarding the effect of an NCIC alert. Instead, the
government relies on Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164 (2008). There the
Supreme Court considered whether evidence from an arrest supported by
probable cause is admissible when the arrest violated state law. Moore, 553
U.S. at 175-78. But we must determine whether the existence of probable
cause was obvious, not whether an arrest supported by probable cause
would have been lawful. Moore does not bear on the obviousness of
probable cause from the NCIC alert.
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circuits are divided. Compare Spiegel v. Cortese, 196 F.3d 717, 724 n.1
(7th Cir. 2000) (stating that probable cause is unnecessary on each element
of a crime), and Gasho v. United States, 39 F.3d 1420, 1428 (9th Cir.
1994) ([A]n officer need not have probable cause for every element of the
offense.), with Williams v. Alexander, Ark., 772 F.3d 1307, 1312 (8th Cir.
2014) (For probable cause to exist, there must be probable cause for all
elements of the crime.), and United States v. Joseph, 730 F.3d 336, 342
(3d Cir. 2013) (To make an arrest based on probable cause, the arresting
officer must have probable cause for each element of the offense.).
Neither our court nor the Supreme Court has weighed in on this circuit
split. 8
Without precedent on the issue, we conclude that the district court
did not commit a clear or obvious error in failing to find probable cause
without at least some evidence on Mr. Argueta-Mejias permission to
reenter the United States after his prior removal. 9
The Supreme Court has held that [p]robable cause does not require
the same type of specific evidence of each element of the offense as would
be needed to support a conviction. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 149
(1972). But the Court has not decided whether probable cause can exist
without at least some evidence on every element of a suspected crime.
We do not suggest how the district court should have ruled on the
issue of probable cause. That issue is not before us. We hold only that
under the plain-error standard, which the government asks us to apply, the
existence of probable cause was not sufficiently clear and obvious to
require reversal.
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III.
Standard of Review
The government contends that even if probable cause was absent, the
district court erred in suppressing the fingerprints and immigration record
because their discovery was attenuated from the illegal arrest. We reject
this contention.
The issue is whether the illegal arrest [was] in part for the purpose
of obtaining unauthorized fingerprints so Defendant could be connected to
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2.
3.
The purpose of the booking process was to obtain Mr. ArguetaMejias fingerprints to identify him as a previously deported
felon.
4.
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Appellants App. at 110. From these facts, the district court concluded the
government had failed to show the absence of an investigatory motive. Id.
We agree with the district court. The government bore the burden of
proving that the evidence was attenuated from the unlawful arrest (see
p. 11, above), and the crime hinged on identity and proof that the Attorney
General had not granted permission to reenter the country. See United
States v. Pena-Montes, 589 F.3d 1048, 1058 (10th Cir. 2009) (stating that
the critical evidence necessary to convict the defendant of illegal reentry
was identity itself: [the defendants] fingerprints and related records);
see also United States v. Garcia-Beltran, 389 F.3d 864, 868 (9th Cir. 2004)
([I]n the investigation of immigration offenses, establishing the identity
of the suspect is an essential component of such an investigation.). For
these aspects of its burden of proof, the government needed Mr. ArguetaMejias immigration record. And there is no evidence of the governments
ability to retrieve the immigration record without Mr. Argueta-Mejias
fingerprints. In these circumstances, we conclude that the government
failed to prove that the evidence had been attenuated from the illegal
arrest.
The government acknowledges that the district court made three
correct factual findings:
1.
2.
3.
The purpose of the booking process was to obtain Mr. ArguetaMejias fingerprints to identify him as a previously deported
felon.
But the government argues the district court wrongly interpreted the
significance of these findings, claiming that
Conclusion
We affirm the district courts order suppressing the evidence of post-
Robert E. Bacharach
Circuit Judge
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